Royal Pains

Michael Cieply reports in the Times about recent challenges (as from Christopher Hitchens and Martin Filler) to the accuracy of the depiction of historical events in “The King’s Speech”—in particular, regarding its whitewashing of King George VI’s support for the appeasement of Hitler’s Germany and Winston Churchill’s support for that king’s predecessor and brother, Edward VIII. Cieply thinks that the dispute is merely a matter of pre-Oscar jousting, adding that

it is lost on few here that a primary competitor, “The Social Network,” has also faced questions about the veracity of its portrayal of the Facebook entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg, so any showdown between that film and “The King’s Speech” over matters of fact and fiction might end in a draw.

It might, but it shouldn’t. “The King’s Speech” is an anesthetic movie, “The Social Network” an invigorating one—and their scripts’ departures from the historical record serve utterly divergent purposes. The tale of royal triumph through a commoner’s efforts expurgates the story in order to render its characters more sympathetic, whereas the depiction of Mark Zuckerberg as a lonely and friendless genius (when, in fact, he has long been in a relationship with one woman) serves the opposite purpose: to render him more ambiguous, to challenge the audience to overcome antipathy for a character twice damned, by reasonable women, as an “asshole.” (David Kirkpatrick’s article at the Daily Beast about the film’s supposed inaccuracies dwells mainly on trivial nuances—“The real Sean Parker…is certainly high-strung. But nobody would ever call him mean.”)

Imagine if George VI, working to overcome his stammer, were seen at his balcony endorsing Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement (as, in fact, happened), or had expressed a preference, as Filler writes, for “the appeaser Lord Halifax to Churchill as [Chamberlain’s] replacement.” It might have made the movie more surprising and more complex than the pap that’s currently enjoying an outpouring of undeserved honors. The inaccuracies in “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network” are as different in kind as the movies are different in quality.

P.S. My colleague Nancy Franklin tweeted a link to a recording of King George VI’s actual speech of September 3, 1939. It shows up the bland prowess of Colin Firth’s performance. Listen to the exotic, perhaps now-extinct tang of the actual king’s vowels, and his hint of vibrato, and compare them to Firth’s dulled-down inflections. There’s as little flavor to his speech as to the movie itself.

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